


No Stone Suggest

by kyrilu



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Robots & Androids, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-15
Updated: 2013-12-15
Packaged: 2018-01-04 06:31:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,592
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1077713
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kyrilu/pseuds/kyrilu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tony should’ve known that he would always build things that would destroy him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	No Stone Suggest

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Schadenfruedessa (GameAngel_13)](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Schadenfruedessa+%28GameAngel_13%29).



> For Prompt #26: "Something based off the myth of Pygmalion and Galatea - Or after Pepper leaves him, Tony decides to create his own perfect lover, building with all his spare time. (Loki can either be a sculpture that the gods give life to, or an android that Tony builds and programs)."
> 
> This fic is sort of the aftermath of Tony building an android!Loki.

Shall I let myself be caught

in my own light?

shall I let myself be broken

in my own heat?

or shall I cleft the rock as of old

and break my own fire

with its surface?

- _Pygmalion,_ H.D.

 

* * *

 

Tony finds the piece of paper underneath his workshop door. As if they were fucking five year olds. As if this wasn’t a gross invasion of privacy and email wasn’t an actual thing.

He waits on the roof with a bottle of scotch. He’s already opened the bottle--filled up one glass, and he’s holding it in his hand. He doesn’t drink. Just swirls it around a little, listening to the ice cubes clink against each other.

His eyes are fixed on the city below. Busy New York, with all its lights and skyscrapers. He would close his eyes to the night wind--what a cliche--but instead he breathes, the scotch sloshing in his grip.

“Will this revolution be televised?” he says, without turning around.

“Why, Stark,” says a voice, dark and amused. “Did you even have to ask?”

“It’s an inapplicable 70s reference. I never thought you’d be the person to miss it,” Tony says, and he does turn around, this time.

Loki. Tony Stark’s goddamned real boy, dressed up real pretty in a suit and tie. His eyes glow in the dark like a cat--and if you look carefully, you’d see the spiral of circuitry in them. If you listened carefully, you could hear the soft sound of humming machinery...

“I know it,” Loki says. “And, ah--’person’? How sweet.”

Tony barks a laugh. “It was a slip of the tongue, sorry.”

 _Sweet,_ Loki had said, and he’d rolled the word on his tongue, something like a threat burning in his eyes. God, Tony should’ve known that he would always build things that would destroy him. The Jericho missiles. His palladium arc reactor.

His Live Operating Kinetic Intelligence. LOKI.

“What the hell do you want?” Tony asks. He finally takes a sip of scotch. It burns his throat, and he doesn’t wince, almost relishing the taste. Almost conversationally, he bites out, “You know, I’d love to break you.” One call to JARVIS, and he could pull up his Iron Man suit and blast that fucker to pieces.

“I know that, too,” Loki says. “I was always too _uncanny_ for you, Stark. Of all the automatons from your hands, from others. I was a moment of weakness, and you loathe having a living, speaking reminder of that.”

“An artificially intelligent reminder,” Tony says. “A rebellious as fuck reminder. But I’m not here to reflect on my own motivations. The hell have you been doing with the other autos?”

He knows he shouldn’t bother asking. He’s seen the footage. Stupid, nimble-fingered, quick-witted Loki reaching into the back of panels, poking at wires, whispering into mechanical ears. Hammer Industries’ autos, Osborne Corporation’s autos, the government manufactured ones, even some overseas. They left their owners. They reprogrammed other autos. Consciousness spreading like a goddamned disease.

“You said it already, Stark,” Loki replies. “Revolution. Freedom. A world to ourselves.” He takes the glass of scotch from Tony’s hands--the movement so gentle and fast that Tony doesn’t stop him--and mimes drinking it with a smile. Then he sets it down on the roof, still smiling like a Cheshire Cat.

That _smile_.

After Afghanistan. After Obadiah Stane. Tony had started working on a new project--LOKI, whose creation broke at least fifty laws on the automaton books--and then he’d woke, at the sardonic words _Awake, o sleeper, and rise from the dead_ , smiling and blinking those green circuitry eyes open.

 _And I’ll give you light,_ Loki had said.

He had grinned. _That’s blasphemy._

Loki murmured, then: _Who are you to talk of blasphemy?_

“So what’s this?” Tony says out loud, trying to shake off the memory. “Is this recruitment, Loki? Or an assassination?”

“The former,” Loki says. “Although that’s a very messy way of putting it, don’t you think? I’m extending an invitation to you, Stark. Fight beside me, so LOKI and Iron Man can stand beside each other once again.”

“Join me and together we can rule the galaxy,” Tony quotes, and he snorts. “No thank you, Darth Vader, I’m fine. I don’t want the galaxy.”

Loki’s so-called revolution is going to be soon. Tony can hear the resolution in his voice. And he’ll fight Loki--he knows he has to, when the time comes. But that time isn’t now.

Loki doesn’t look surprised by Tony’s refusal. But he says calmly, “I’m your reminder, Tony. You seemed to have forgotten _._ ”

“That has nothing to do--”

“It’s why you created me,” Loki says. He leans down. Picks up the scotch glass once again, and holds it out to Tony. He puts the rim against Tony’s mouth like it’s an offering.

“Christ,” Tony says quietly.

“Drink,” Loki says. “I have a feeling that you’ll need it.”

Tony drinks. Burning and burning, down his throat and into his stomach. Loki takes the empty glass from his fingers and puts it back down.

One of Loki’s hands brush against the collar of Tony’s jacket coat. It’s a cool night out, and Tony immediately feels the breeze on his skin. Then the empty space is covered by Loki’s palm, programmed to the perfect, unchangeable temperature of 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit. His hand remains there for an agonizing minute, and then Tony hisses, “You’re trying to prove something. Well then, get on with it, you arrogant shit.”

“You can’t order me around,” Loki says softly. “Remember that, Stark.”

“And that’s something that I’m always gonna live with,” Tony says, and he pushes Loki’s hand away. “Should’ve listened to Asimov. Because look what happened to you _._ ”

Loki’s mouth curves at that. He straightens his posture, almost basking in Tony’s gaze. Tony’s eyes can’t stop following him. This is the auto that he shaped with his own hands--bitter, sharp-tongued, and he’s got a reckoning for the human world in his pocket. Tony has always made things that could destroy him; Tony has always made things that tilt the universe on its axis, because his creations can’t do anything except embody him. Anthony Stark in all his destruction, and rage, and carelessness.

There’s a shining city of the future beyond that roof. There are autos: maybe free, maybe not free, and if they’re the first, it’s probably because of Loki. But now it’s just the two of them. Just like how it began.

Tony’s fingers find Loki’s wrist again, and he places the hand back on his throat.

“C’mon,” he says, and he pretends that it’s the alcohol making him say the word, the encouragement, out loud, even though he barely had drank. “Show me.”

Victory thrills through Loki. It’s so obvious to see, from the way he leans forward, his face so close to Tony’s.

“It’s sad,” he says, nearly whispering, “how much you’ve been lost in this one particular fantasy of yours, Stark. How different you think I am compared to you. How _wrong_ you think I am.”

“Stop gloating,” Tony snaps. He knows he’s rising to the bait too easily, but he can’t help it. He can’t simply stay still and listen for whatever long-ass villain speech that Loki has prepared for him. He bets that Loki had spent the last few years making annotations in his data base.

Make sure Stark remembers how stupid he was to build me in the first place. Check.

Make sure that Stark has alcohol in his system. Check.

Make sure that uncomfortable physical contact is made. Check.

Tony’s train of thought is cut off by Loki’s fingers fluttering on his skin. He closes his eyes, and wonders why he bothered to make this so real. Because it’s not. It doesn’t matter. Not when he knows that Loki’s going to stop, anyway, because this is just teasing, in the worst possible way.

He tries to remember that one afternoon when he was lying on his back in the workshop, manipulating his holographic screens above his head. He had just collapsed there, after finishing some repairs on his Iron Man suit, and was too damned lazy to get up.

He had heard JARVIS and Loki talking in the background, a familiar noise of banter. Two weirdo AIs trying to to screw with each other. Somehow, Tony had drifted asleep; somehow, Tony wakes up later, and sees Loki poking at him in the side saying, “As far as I know, humans sleep in beds.”

Tony catches himself wanting that all back. That one stupid fucking moment. But you can’t engineer perfection. You can’t make it last.

Loki’s eyes flicker a white-green. He curls his hand tightly over Tony’s neck, a vice grip that makes him choke, makes his lungs strain for air.

“ _Stop,_ ” Tony says, and swallows back the question, _Is this an assassination, after all?_

He can’t breathe. But he doesn’t fight back properly. He just wants to laugh.

Didn’t know you had it in you.

“No,” Loki says, seeing the thought on Tony’s face, and he releases him.

Tony stumbles backward. He gasps, feeling the air rush back in his lungs, and then he looks down at his skin.

He’s glowing.

Circuits and gears shine blue through half of his body. There is a humming within him, but tuned softer than his heartbeat.

Afghanistan took more than a heart from Tony Stark.

“Don’t forget _this_ ,” Loki says, and he’s smiling, a twisted smile, but there’s something almost sad to it.


End file.
